Gravity
by Jack Hawksmoor
Summary: Different take on what might have happened between Evey and V in the time they had together.
1. Chapter 1

She was sitting in the hallway when she heard him return. She was sitting in the hallway because her legs had given out on her on the way back from the bathroom. She supposed she could have crawled back to bed. It seemed so unnecessary. She could almost see the whole gallery from where she was sitting, the whole wide space of it. She had warm clothes and the floor was, to be honest, as comfortable as anything else, really. She leaned her bare head against stone walls and dozed for a little while. Her legs would sort themselves out shortly, she was sure, and then she'd get back to bed...

But when she heard a door slam purposefully she was still sitting there, and started awake at the sound.

She put a hand out to the cold stone she was leaning against. Slowly, wincing, she moved to lever herself up, onto her knees first, and then...

There was a crash, a panicked kind of scrabbling noise and the sound of something breaking. She started like a deer, her eyes going wide. Then she was flailing at the floor, the wall, clawing herself vertical without any grace, launching herself out of the alcove toward the sound. She clutched at the wall for balance like a drunk. Hands white and clasping, she swung around into the main room and stumbled to a halt, stopping herself from plunging forward face-first into the floor mainly by force of will.

V was leaning against the piano, and for a split second she felt a heat-shimmer of doubt, he looked so casual. But then she saw the candelabra knocked over, one of the vases in pieces on the floor.

She opened her mouth to call to him, but he turned to look at her before she could speak. Some strange sixth sense. Sometimes she could swear she had it herself. A nagging feeling of weight when she was around him, an odd tug of gravity that gave their slightest interaction a feeling of purposeful inevitability. Something made her turn her head when he came near, even if she shouldn't have known he was there.

Then again, he might have just heard her stumbling around.

"E-" he began, and it was all wrong, his voice was-

Then his hand slipped, on the polished wood, and he nearly fell. His voice, curling around the syllables of her name, cut off with a surprised grunt. He leaned the whole of his upper body across the back of the piano like a lover and she caught him as he started to slide back, white hands twisting into black cloth. She could taste her own pulse in her mouth, pounding unnaturally. She levered the whole weight of her slight frame up against him, keeping him propped for a straining, fleeting moment against the piano.

"V," she gasped, her arms already shaking with effort, "What-" A shifting of weight and she fumbled with him. He tried to catch himself, hissing sharply in pain. They both tried for the bench, and through some miracle managed to land him on it.

He was breathing in gasps. He leaned over the keys, his hands gripping her arms reflexively. A faint moan riding the exhalation of every breath. When she pulled a hand back her palm was painted red.

"Oh, god..." She murmured in realization."V..." She got hold of his shoulders, crouched down so that they were, for all intents and purposes, eye to eye. "V, what happened to you?"He turned his head from her with a little "ah" sound of pain.

"What have you done?" She continued, pushing at folds of dark fabric. She got a brief pass of warm, wet cloth before he caught her hand.

"'It is better to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.'" V said finally, pulling her hand gently from him. " I have been taking risks, and have gained what I am due from it."

Evey was, for a moment, left without anything to say. Could a smiling mask look so sad?

'A ship in harbor is safe. But that's not what ships are for.' She couldn't quite recall where she'd heard that, but the thought of it calmed her, somehow. It sounded like something her father might have said. She sat back on her heels.

"You're bleeding." She said gently. There it was. That feeling again. A sudden wrenching pull of gravity, as if she could somehow see his next words coming. As if they'd existed whole in this room since the world started, just waiting for the two of them to get there and claim them. The blood on her hands was almost unbearably bright.

"I'm fine." He replied. "Like an elderly lion, I have returned home to lick my wounds." He put a hand out, on the piano, took a breath, and tried to stand. She got under one of his arms with a shoulder. He turned his mask close to her face. She could hear his breath against the false lips.

"You shouldn't, Evey, I'll-"

"Hurt me?" She cut him off with frank disbelief. Her reward was the lowering of that porcelain white face, a slight flinch in his shoulders. She pressed her lips in a thin line.

"Where?" She prodded impatiently, gesturing at the rest of the gallery with a nod of her head. Almost involuntarily, he turned his mask in a direction she wasn't ready to go.

"The infirmary..." He said, hesitating

('Process her.')

Evey took a deep breath and got a better grip on him.

"All right."

They stopped at the doorway for a rest. He sagged against the wall for a moment and she did the same. She had an unpleasant tingling at the back of her head, an odd numbness around her mouth. She couldn't quite make herself stop shaking, and wondered detachedly if she was in danger of passing out.

Psychosomatic? Lord knew, that hallway...That hallway. She remembered the infirmary was the third door on the right. She remembered...

"It's...all right. You don't have to...I can make it...Evey." V's assurance was somehow ruined by the break in his voice. If she passed out, he might not make it to the infirmary, she realized.

She put a hand on his arm and leaned close to him.

"So can I." She told him softly. She heard his intake of breath, saw the mask tilt a fraction. His hand came up slowly, touched the side of her neck. Thoroughly taken aback. As if she'd worked magic with her voice.

He had to feel it. She'd said the words as if she'd picked them, quivering, right out of the air.

She was suddenly close enough to him that with only the slightest tilt of her head, her cheek brushed lightly against the cool white mask.

The side of her face pressed gently against his false one, just for a moment. Absently, as if they'd both been blown there by a stray breeze. For a breath of time, she thought...how sweet...

How sweet it might be...

Then her own hand shoved at the door and they gathered each other up for the last few steps.

Herodotus, (father of history)


	2. Chapter 2

She didn't think he could have got her to leave if he hadn't said please. If he'd demanded, if he'd insisted she let him be... she imagined she'd have stood there until he passed out from blood loss, and then helped him anyway. It was unnerving. Something about the tone of his voice.

Please. As if he had no right to ask her. Please. There was no fear in his voice, no pain. Not ashamed. Something softer.

Was it just his need for privacy? She stepped back from him, once he had everything he might need spread out in front of him. She offered him help, and he thanked her for it, and asked her, quietly, to leave him.

She shut the door to the infirmary with uncertainty twisting in her stomach for the first time in what felt like a long time. She leaned against the door, shut her eyes, inhaled slowly. She stood on shaky legs in her former prison, listening to the silence, as she had so often before.

Then, from behind the door, a sound, a pain sound, quickly choked off.

Outside the door, Evey abruptly sat down. Not silence. There hadn't always been silence. She put a hand to her mouth.

When she had still thought her life over, when she had been trapped and dying in a cage little things became more important. Small routines to hang her sanity on. She had thought she was in some sort of solitary confinement wing. She had so rarely felt even a hint of any other prisoners.

Except...

She'd thought they must have a routine as well. That they went around to the prisoners in the same order. They would torture her-not every day- but, after they finished with her, she would always hear him. The next prisoner on the list, she'd thought.

She would clamp her hands over her ears for hours, to muffle the screaming. Trying to sleep while it was going on was worse than impossible.

Every time. After they were done with her she would hear it. One lost soul screaming a lament into the early morning hours. V. V's voice.

"My god," she breathed, and walked out. Her stomach was churning with an unappetizing twist of horror and triumph.

She fell onto the couch because it was closer, rested her head back with a sigh of purely physical relief. She knew she should stay awake for him. If he didn't come out in half an hour she should go back in there and make him take her help. He might...he...

--------------------

Evey woke up on the couch under a violet afghan. She blinked, bemused. Then, with a sudden lurch of her heart, she sat bolt upright, before her memory had even fully returned to her. Instinct before thought. V...

She looked at the blanket under her hands. She hadn't put it there. When she turned her head she saw, on the table, a glass of water and a bowl of fruit which she had also not put there.

Evey sighed from somewhere back in her spleen and deflated against the cushions. He was all right. He'd brought her tangerines, for god's sake, he had to be all right. She rubbed her hand over her face, then back across the fuzz of hair growing in on her scalp.

It was getting so she couldn't sit down on a flat surface for more than five minutes. If she wasn't eating, she was dozing off. V had said her body needed to heal, but it was becoming bloody inconveinient.

Then she reached out and grabbed fruit out of the bowl, because she wasn't sleeping, which meant she was famished. She threw off the blanket and went to look for him, stuffing little orange wedges into her mouth, the peel curling gently through her fingers.

She was pleasantly surprised to find her feet a good deal sturdier than they had been, and started to wonder about just how long she had been out. Her eyes touched on a door that had always been locked as she headed to the kitchen. No real reason for it, she just found her eyes catching on it for a moment. She dropped the peel in the bin, dusting off her hands. He wasn't in the kitchen, though she hadn't really expected him to be. She'd have to go back to the infirmary, just to check.

But...it was odd...

She walked out of the kitchen, frowning at that locked door. At least, it had been locked in the past. She walked up to it, touched the handle. No reason to...no reason to wonder about it now...

Good god, he was in there.

She stepped back like she'd been slapped. No. No, she had no reason to... she couldn't possibly know any such thing, she was...she was just...

Evey hugged herself without thinking, then turned herself completely around, spinning on her heel with all the confidence of a human being raised nominally logical. She found herself looking almost directly at the door that led to her false prison, and the infirmary.

Evey muttered something unladylike under her breath and thought dark things about the concept of coincidence. Then she took her blackest memories in hand and went to enter the place they lived.

She touched the walls as she walked down the hallway. She touched the walls with something like tenderness pushing up against the back of her throat. Utterly bizarre.

He wasn't in the infirmary, though he'd pushed the table up against the wall and cleaned the blood off the instruments. She looked in the sink, touched the bottom of it with a fingertip. Bone dry.

She opened every door that could be opened in that hall. She didn't enter any of the rooms, merely opened the doors that yielded to her fingers and gave the rooms therein the consideration they deserved. The last door that opened for her revealed the room that had taken her hair from her. She tilted her head, eyes picking out the details of the chair, the dirt on the tile. The stainless steel sink gleamed in the corner, several electric razors displayed neatly on a shelf beside it.

Absently, she touched the back of her head, an inch of hair prickling the pads of her fingers.

Her eyes lit on the blank wall above the sink, where instinct and habit told her a mirror of some kind ought to be. Ought to be. Wasn't. Her hand toyed with the door for a moment. She straightened, then took off towards the shadow gallery like a woman on a mission.

She glanced at the locked door that teased at her brain as she went past it. Had to admit to herself that she really wasn't looking for him anymore. Because she knew where...

At least she thought she knew...

Then she flipped on the light to her room, and for a split second had an outlandish thought that she might find him there, waiting for her.

Hah. Silly...

She went to the dresser, glancing up at the mirror for a brief instant, giving the latin glazed into the reflection a pass of her eyes before she started to search through the drawers. She'd seen it...she knew it was there...

Most of the drawers had clothes in them. Women's clothes. Her clothes. One of the small ones on the top was full of marbles. And one of them...

Ah.

She smiled down at the open drawer in her hand. It was filled with little bottles made of colored glass. Perfume bottles, inkwells, tiny, intricately decorated bits of nothing. Every color of the rainbow, twinkling up at her in the soft lighting. She reached a hand in and callously shoved them to the side, running her hand along the wooden bottom until her fingers bumped over cold metal.

She found the handle and tugged, pulling it free from glittering pieces of glass like a shell unearthed from beach sand. A hand mirror. It was tarnished, and not very pretty, but when she flipped it around, her reflection smiled back at her, well pleased.

-----------------------

She unbuttoned her shirt and hung it lightly over the chair, placed both of her hands flat against the stainless steel of the sink. The metal was cold, pleasant against her bare skin. She lifted one of her chilled hands and ran it one last time over the stubble growing on her head. Then she picked an electric razor, eyed the setting, and turned it on.

It buzzed cheerfully in her hand, and she barely smiled at it in encouragement.

She went once over her head completely before she lifted the hand mirror, checking for missed spots.

In front of her ears...The razor nuzzled up to the area in question, leaving only bare skin behind. She flicked off the power for a moment and heard someone breathe into the sudden silence.

It should have been strange that it wasn't a surprise.

She heard the inhalation. It sounded like a kick in the gut. A sharp word twisting like a knife. An old lover walking down the street with someone new. That first knowing breath of pain and want.

She turned the mirror, even though she knew. Just tilted it a little so she could see him at the door.

Hat off, cape put up, he was a slim form in black, watching her behind his mask.

She took notice of the way his fingers curled into a fist as he leaned into the doorway. Watched in mesmerized facination as his hand tightened, black leather clamping down on the doorframe. His face had always been hidden from her. He ought to seem a mystery, his feelings, his reactions kept away where no one could see them.

It would be mistake, she thought with rising tension, for anyone to think that. For her to think that.

Every line of his body, every slight movement told eloquently of a man ambushed by desire. Abruptly hit over the back of the head with it. How did she look to him? Standing calmly in the reflection of hell V had created. Shaving her own head with a steady hand.

The muscles of Evey's stomach tightened low in her abdomen.

He was staring at her, watching her breathe, watching her fingers trail over the nape of her neck, brushing away stray hair. Wanting her. The hunger was so blatant it was near blinding. Just looking at him, it almost made her teeth hurt. She set down the mirror.

If she turned around...if she turned around he was going to have her. Right there on the floor, if necessary.

The ice was popping and cracking under her feet, and she had about five seconds to get the hell off or ready herself for a swim...

She reached down and turned on the faucet. Took one step back for leverage, leaned down, and thrust her head under the spray.

Echoes of her captivity. She rinsed the hair clippings from her head as if she couldn't hear them. As if she didn't know his moment of romanticism was suddenly faced with flat black reality. The memory they both shared of his hands shoving her face into a sink, a toilet full of water. Finally stood back from the sink with icy trails of water rolling from her neck down her bare back.

She dragged wet hands over a smooth head. Flicked beads of water from her fingers as she lowered them, satisfied.

She turned to look at him, but the echo had been too loud, and he'd gone.

Relief suddenly tasted rather a lot like disappointment.


	3. Chapter 3

Evey didn't see him again for an entire day. She had no stray thoughts, not the slightest suspicion that she wasn't utterly alone in the gallery. It almost felt like a reprieve.

News on the telly was all atwitter over a food shipment that had been hijacked, purportedly on the way to a public house for children in Bristol. When she'd first heard the news her eyes had shot to the bowl of tangerines on the table beside her.

The tangerines failed to comment on the look of shock and growing amusement on her face. She'd turned up the volume and leaned forward, her hands digging at the peel of her illicit prize. She wasn't an idiot. No orphanage was getting tangerines. Not in England, anyway. It had been a shipment of Sutler's, if anything, but she was interested to see the spin her former co-workers were putting on it.

There were reports of "A man in black" and some mention of it being an act of terrorism, a quick, sorrowful monologue from Jeffrey, BTN's current 'man on the street' about the effects on the poor children, and even a quick interview with one of the drivers.

"Bloody coward," Snarled the man.

Evey leaned back, moderately impressed. Then Jeffrey mentioned that Chancellor Sutler had vowed to replace the food stolen with his own personal supplies, and she choked on her tangerine.

"Nice touch." She mumbled, wiping her mouth. She would bet that the supplies sent by the chancellor would be of a quality surprisingly familiar to those children.

V the terrorist stealing food from little orphans. Pretty low-they must be getting desperate.

She heard his footstep on the floor. She heard it all down the back of her neck, and jerked her head in that direction without turning around. The fruit fumbled in her hand and fell, rolling away from her. Escaping. She watched his feet cross the floor in front of her. Watched his hand reach down and pick it up. She raised her eyes a little, saw him brushing it off. He held it out to her, and she looked him in the mask as she took it. As if seeing him with new eyes, she thought she could spy some faint remnant of his previous emotions in the line of his shoulders, in the way he pulled his hand away when she accepted the tangerine from him. Was it strange that he was so careful not to touch her?

He might have said something witty, quoted someone long dead and much wiser than either of them. He did not, in the end, do either of these things. Instead there was a silence, like a dead thing, hovering there between them.

She was suddenly quite certain that V didn't know she'd seen him behind her in the mirror.

"I read the book." Evey said without preamble. His posture relaxed, a little.

"Oh? Which-"

"The Count of Monte Cristo." She interrupted, and V went quiet for a moment, then sank down onto the couch beside her.

"Did you like it?" There was a cough, a rough spot in his voice that made her want to clear her throat.

Evey looked down at the fruit in her hands, carefully set it aside.

"I found parts of it...familiar." They both looked away from each other for a moment. They both knew exactly how accurate Edmund Dante's experience with prison life was.

Evey found herself eying him, finally gave in to an impulse and brought a hand up to his side.

"Are you all right?" She asked, brushing over the area she remembered. V stiffened a little, but took her hand without haste, pulled it from him, holding it in his hands like a bird.

"I'm fine."His voice was warm, almost pleased. She looked up at him with a sharp eye.

"You said that before." She leaned closer, a hint of a smile tugging at her mouth. "I'm not sure-" But she hesitated. 'I'm not sure you're telling the truth now. I'm not sure you weren't lying to me then. Or any other time in between.'

He might have guessed what she was thinking, might just have been sobered by the sudden abrupt fade of good humor from her eyes.

"You've cut your hair." He said lightly, and it was just possible he was trying to change the subject. It was just possible that he wanted to remind her, make her think on why she'd done it in the first place. He was clever enough to figure it out.

She saw a different woman in the mirror now, when she bothered to look. Sometimes she could almost see a flash of her father in her eyes. A spark of her mother in the curl of her mouth. She had never been able to say that before. Ever. Not without feeling sick and weak and inadequate. It was comfort unlooked-for, and she appreciated it. She couldn't remember the last time she had liked herself.

He was staring at her. She could feel eyes she couldn't see. Watching her think. Hoping she would come to the right conclusion?

She wasn't exactly angry at him for that. It didn't feel like anger, and it was strange that she couldn't put a word to the feeling. Impatient? Upset? The uncertainty unnerved her, and she struck back without thought of consequence.

"I saw you behind me." She said in retaliation, and was pleased to see his head snap up. She lifted her eyebrows and added, not quite apologetically, "In the mirror."

V leaned back against the cushions and exhaled slowly. She felt him release her hand, felt the tension in his muscles where she was leaning against him, and was suddenly, abashedly sorry.

"Did you." His voice was very still. Like the rest of him. "Yes, of course you did." Horrified. She got it like a bolt of lightning from on high. He was horrified with himself.

She shouldn't be able to tell. She shouldn't be able to tell by the way his head was angled down and away from her that she'd nearly killed him. Reached up and smashed the life right out of him. She shouldn't be so certain he was two seconds from bolting to his feet, just as soon as he could get his heart beating again. She shouldn't, but she was.

For some reason, she flashed vividly, blindingly, on those long nights in a cell with her hands clapped over her ears, trying to sleep past the screaming, and hating herself for only wanting it to be quiet.

"God, I'm tired..." She sighed, shutting her eyes tight against sudden tears. She slid down, shifting herself until her head was resting against his leg. He stopped when she touched him, stopped and sat himself back into the leather from where he'd already started to push himself up, away from her. She'd cut it close, but he stayed. She tried not to shiver, even though it was freezing, like the gallery had dropped ten degrees in ten seconds.

After a while, she heard him start breathing again.

Evey waited, not wanting to move lest he leave. It was a long time until she looked, and when she did, it made her ache unpleasantly. She felt it again, sharp as a knife's point, that pull of gravity. It the way his head was turned to the side, the way the shadows lingered on the dead white face. An echo of some promise, something she needed to understand but couldn't. She felt his hand on her shoulder before he put it there. She pressed her face harder into his leg in response, only raised her eyes again when the weight of his hand finally disappeared. His fingers hovered, hesitating, before reaching out to touch the smooth skin on her head. She sighed, felt the muscles of his leg under her cheek relax a bit at the sound.

"Oh..." He said like sweet relief, and that seemed to sum up everyone's feelings on the situation.

For a little while, neither of them said anything at all. Off somewhere in the gallery, she heard a clock chiming, and couldn't be bothered counting the time.

Her eyes shut of their own accord as his hand brushed down her neck, a quiet intensity of affection implicit in the offering of his touch. The texture of his glove spiked in her mind, drawing her attention. It was oddly, abruptly unsatisfying. She wondered, for the first time, just how long...How long had it been...

She had never touched him.

An ugly thought.

A chill raced down her spine from where the warm leather over his hand was cradling the back of her head. Slowly, she reached up, wrapped small fingers around his forearm. Feeling the soft cloth, the heat of the flesh underneath.

He 'hmm'ed in pleasure, the sound reminding her somehow of a cat stretching in the sunlight.

Her fingers worked their way down toward his wrist, and he didn't immediately notice. Not until she'd slid her hand under the stiff leather guard on his glove.

"How long have you been in there?" She wondered softly, comfort making her voice thick. "How long since someone touched you? Really touched you." How long, she wondered, without the silent implied sympathy in a friendly hand.

"Evey..." He murmured, a languid feline on a windowsill, mixed with the faintest reproach.  
Quickly, before he could change his mind, she dipped her fingers just past the ridge of his shirtsleeve and stroked bare skin.

V froze at the touch. A molded statue of himself. His leg wooden under her cheek, his hand stiff at her shoulder. She fancied, for a moment, that he'd shut his eyes. Tentatively, she wiggled her fingers a bit further in, stroking the skin on the inside of his wrist. A bit patchy, alternately smooth and rough.

He inhaled, drawing her eye sharply. She realized, after a moment, that it had caught her attention simply because it been some time since she'd heard him breathe.

His hand tensed on the base of her neck, but he held his arm still. There was something appalling hovering over his shoulders. It reminded her of what she had seen behind her in the mirror the day before, only more...brittle. He looked breakable, she thought, her stomach dropping like thunder in the distance. A faint threat of coming disaster. The smiling white mask tilted, gathering shadows. Watching her. Staring at the place where they met.

Her fingers fluttered across the cuff of his sleeve, dawdled over a button. The cloth parted at her touch, and V twitched, as if she'd started pulling clothing in another area entirely. She caught her breath and slid her hand underneath the fabric of his shirt.

Before he changes his mind before he-

"Ahhh..."not quite a word, more a burst of air. Her equilibrium started to teeter at the sound of it.

She shifted her whole body up, closer to him, her hand sliding up his arm and back, catching a grip just above his elbow. His other arm came up behind her, and for a moment, a heart-stealing moment she was certain; he was going to kiss her.

Her eyelids lowered, her head tilting back, and for a moment she forgot, and so did he.

But his mask hovered close to her face, and he stopped, remembering. She felt the soft touch of his breath, escaping through the false smile, spreading warmth over her mouth. She parted her lips, and inhaled. She could nearly taste him, like this.

"'Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.'" V sighed, wonderingly, so close to her, so close...she leaned her cheek against his mask, shutting her eyes, denying tears.

"V..." she was asking him, god damn her, god damn it all...

A soft sound, riding a puff of air through the lips of his mask. Want. Need. 

"I can't." V spoke into her ear, clutching her closer, betraying his own words. She tightened her arms as well, gathering him up.

It was worse, she realized immediately. It was worse like that, to be closer to him, but not in the right way.

She was pushing at him then, flushed and agitated. His arms clung tight for a moment before he reacted, releasing her. She broke away with a flash in her eye.  
For a moment, they stared at each other. Then, with an exasperated hiss of air, Evey abruptly shook her head and walked away from him.

-----------------------------  
Titus Andronicus


	4. Chapter 4

That evening, he beat the holy hell out of the suit of armor.

She'd spent her time reading. She read a little in the interrogation room, back in the false prison. Good light for reading. This had upset V a great deal. Then she'd retired to her room for a fresh book and continued reading there. This upset V much less. At least it had until he'd come to get her for dinner, and she'd refused to eat anything.

Firstly, it upset him because she was supposed to be getting her strength back and skipping meals wasn't likely to help her any, and secondly, more deviously, because it was an insult to his personal bizarre notions of hospitality. She wasn't quite oblivious enough not to notice how often he gave her gifts. She supposed he might even think her experience in his personal prison was a gift of sorts. At least sometimes, if the lighting was just right.

He was playing that song, when he put his head in to tell her dinner was ready. Trying to please her, to get her to come out. She was polite, and very cold, as she had been all day.

When she noticed him watching her in the hall. Staring at her hands. The hand that had touched him. When he'd looked in on her in the interrogation room with the air of a man who'd looked everywhere, finally got down to the one place she couldn't possibly be, and found an unpleasant surprise. When he'd peeked in to check on her with tea she wouldn't take. Polite, and cold.

She could see, by dinnertime, that he was starting to unravel.

That evening, he beat the holy hell out of the suit of armor.

At the first unearthly crash she bolted to the door, pressed her ear to the crack. She heard the sounds of a fight, mixed with a distinctive clattering of distressed plate steel. Evey sighed in relief, relaxing, moving back from the door. Just practice, or something like it.

The noise went on for a long time. Long enough and violent enough that she debated going out there, just to check on him. While she was still thinking about it, the fighting reached a crescendo that sounded very much like some significant portion of armor skidding across the length of a room and hitting a wall.

After that, things were very quiet. When she did finally come out much later to brush her teeth and get some water the lights were dimmed, and the suit of armor was standing placidly in its place as if nothing had happened. V was nowhere in sight, and she didn't look for him.

She debated getting something to eat, but in the end decided against it, not trusting the silent dark walls of the gallery around her. It would be very like V to appear suddenly while she was cooking. Besides, she wasn't going to starve. She was an old hand at going to bed hungry.

She left the door open a crack, letting a small slice of dim light into her room. Then she went to bed.

Evey woke later for no reason, and the sliver of brightness was gone, leaving her blind in a dark room. Underground the lack of light was thick, tangible, like black cloth pressing against her eyes. She looked around uselessly for a moment, sat up on the bed. A coil of uneasiness made her tense as she moved to get up, to open the door again. Perhaps V had-

"I prefer it shut, if you don't mind." Said a voice she knew, startling her badly. She jumped, sat back on the bed with a little 'whouf' of breathless surprise.

"V?"

"Yes." The response came almost before she asked the question.

"What-" Her eyes searched, sightless. His voice seemed to be coming from the back of the room, hidden amongst the books. "What are you doing in here?" For a reality twisting moment, she considered that she might be dreaming.

She heard him sigh.

"Merely gathering courage." He replied. For some reason the tone of his voice made her relax, put her two steps forward to accepting a rather surreal encounter.

"I don't understand." She said plainly, swinging her legs up on the bed so she could face where his voice was coming from. She heard cloth shift, heard him move toward her.

"I have something for you." He said, sounding possibly more hesitant and uncertain than she had ever heard him. " A gift, of sorts. I'm not sure it's to your taste, but-" He sighed, and it sounded like hours and hours of thought. Like debate and argument and throwing a suit of armor against a wall.

"I don't know what else to do." There was a certain note of helplessness in his voice that sounded utterly sincere. She recognized it, recognized the feeling behind it from bitter experience, found herself giving him a sympathetic look that she knew he couldn't see.

She felt the mattress ripple as he sat down on the other side of it. There was movement, the sound of him setting something on the bed beside him. Frowning, she reached out, her fingers wandering blind, wondering what the hell he was on about. Her hand brushed something, but V's hand pounced, snatching quickly at her searching fingers.

He held her hand tightly for a moment. The leather was warm and felt almost alive. Was he shaking?

"Is...is everything all right?" She asked hesitantly, when he did not speak.

"I-" He stopped for a breath of laughter that didn't sound entirely happy. "I don't know how to answer that question."

She gave his hand a squeeze, and that seemed to please him. He lifted her hand to his mouth, and when he didn't stop, she expected to feel the hard ridges of a painted smile press against the back of her fingers. Instead she felt human flesh, warm lips presenting a kiss to her hand.

She hissed in a breath through her teeth, stiffening in shock. Her fingers turned in V's hand, curling up, cupping his exposed face.

"Oh," she said, her whole heart in her voice. When he heard it he sagged a little. In relief? Then he turned his face into her hand, pressing his lips to her palm.

She was leaning toward him, because she couldn't not lean toward him. Reaching out with her other hand, because she couldn't help but touch him. One of his arms snaked around her waist and pulled her up against him roughly.

God, he was shaking. The realization sent a shock through her brain in areas she didn't normally have to deal with. The first ripple of an earthquake running deep underground. Buildings would fall, later, but for the moment she was left breathless and unsettled.

"Evey," He said, his voice soft, and a good octave lower than she had ever heard it. She spread her fingers on either side of his face, registering on some level that the skin had an uneven texture, and so far beyond pure pleasure at the opportunity to care in the slightest. His hand came up, the leather over his thumb brushing a line across her lips, while his fingers lifted her chin.

Finding his place? The thought squeezed unbearably in her chest, until he lifted his hand from her mouth, and replaced it with his lips.

She made a small sound against the press of his mouth. He ate the sound right out of her as if it was the choicest thing he'd ever had.

Want. Want suddenly presented itself to her like a living, breathing, clawing, snarling thing. It was like being lit up from the inside out, electricity grabbing her by the back of the neck, flashing sparks right down to her toes. If euphoria was a skin that could be slipped into, she was burning her way through it and out the other side.

He just kissed her. Only a kiss. That particular bit of knowledge hit her in the gut like a concrete block. He only kissed her, and pulled back.

He only lit her up inside and made her real. Only that.

She grabbed onto the circle of his arms, bracing herself, and he did much the same thing, hanging onto her as if she was the only thing in the world worth having.

"'Why, then, can one desire too much of a good thing?'"He breathed, sounding shaken. His mouth found hers again, in the dark, tasting. The sensation was almost unbearable, and yet, having had it, nearly impossible to go without. Too much of a good thing? Yes, she thought, definitely yes.

He was trying to pull back, trying to put her away from him. He rubbed his hands from her shoulders down her arms, repeated the motion, as if trying to convince himself that she was separate from him. 'There. She goes there. Far away from me.' He continued it, trying to put her in her place. The idea was spoiled by the fine tremor in his hands, the way his arms kept wanting to pull her in, closer, until very shortly she was nestled up against his chest. His grip had an unerring tendency to soften, his hand to wander, to stray into a caress.

She let him, she let him try to put her from him because she was half willing to do it herself. The fingers she was pushing up his chest had an uncanny instinct to go for his neck. Her hands started to slide up and she didn't care. She was nearly certain she was about to throw her arms around him, and then she really would be lost. But when her fingers moved they encountered the soft curve of V's throat. Evey had a sudden, blinding urge to reach out and throttle him. It was so sharp she could see her hands around his neck. She made herself stop, made two fists in the fabric of his tunic to stop herself from having a go at him right there. She parted her lips, maybe to warn him, or scream at him, she wasn't sure...

V shifted his legs on the bed, pulling her closer with a rich sound of pleasure on his lips she could feel pounding in her heart. She suddenly had something warm and firm and obvious pressing up against the length of her thigh.

Want promptly beat her over the head into silence. She couldn't even feel her hands anymore, heard a soft moan trail out of her own lips. God, it felt delicious to be held...

V tensed at the sound of it, a raw vibrating tension that made Evey think Want was screaming in his ear as well. His cheek brushed against the soft skin of her shoulder as he leaned down and pressed his lips there. A faint "oh" trailed past his teeth like a wisp of smoke, his voice so low it was nearly a growl. She felt the vibration of sound on her skin. Then he bit her. A careful, deliberate application of teeth.

She tilted her head back, looking up into the darkness that was the ceiling. The darkness that was the whole world. For a flashing, glittering moment, many windows in the shifting plane of her mind aligned and she saw far across her own memory. The sense of some elegant design meant to bring her, to place her in the alley where she'd met V, through all the strange, organic inevitability of their time together right up to the moment where she sat breathless under the press of his mouth. Something shivered in her mind, just out of her sight, hovering at the edge. Something murmured to her. It sounded like fate. It felt as if someone had plucked her like a string.

"Was it all for this?" She asked, sounding odd and sleepy to her own ears. His mouth froze on her skin, pulled back. She looked at where his face might be, if she had light to see it. "Everything you did. To me." She reached up swift as a blow and cupped his face in her hands."Was it for this? For the hope of this?" She picked the words, pulsing, right out of the air as if they had been left there for her. He had flinched a little, at her touch. He exhaled when she stopped speaking and she could feel it, the words waiting for him. For a moment, she had almost seen...everywhere they'd been. Everything they would be.

If she loved him, she might not live through it, she realized.

"I don't know." He said finally, honestly, the pain of bright self-reflection fresh in his throat. A knot of fury inside her relaxed away from violence. She leaned the side of her face against his in silent acceptance, and all the tension seemed to go out of him. For a long moment, she sat there quietly, curled up against him. A moth fluttering at a lightbulb.

"I should go." He said to her, finally.

"So should I." She replied with equal frankness. She wasn't speaking about exiting the bedroom, and he didn't insult her by pretending she was. She felt him recoil a little, as the implications behind her simple words sank in. She would be gone. Soon. They both knew it. Evey wasn't about to be caged, not ever again. Not even in the most well-intentioned way.

"Yes..." He said, faintly. His arms tightened around her, disagreeing. "But not tonight," He breathed, a low, masculine sound that sent goosebumps racing over the whole surface of her body. His hands stroked down her back. As if to confirm she was still with him, she hadn't gone, not yet, because when she went...His head dipped down and he kissed her, in a simple kind of desperation that shocked her speechless. He kissed her like he would never get the chance again, and she let him. She slipped her arms up around his neck and responded as if he were the only thing real in the whole world.

"Evey," He murmured into her lips, his arms embracing her firmly enough that he was nearly hurting her. Because it would be unbearable, if she left. If she was gone...Evey was already holding onto him as tightly as she could manage and still reach his mouth. Unbearable for both of them.

"I'm here." She breathed as his head tilted, his lips trailing down the side of her neck. A hot, needy press of mouth to skin. She made no promises of tomorrow, or the day after. No forevers. She imagined he would like to hear it and believe it, maybe even more than she would like to say it and mean it.

Pity. Pity it would be a lie.

"I'm here..." She reassured him, and it was the only truth she could give him. As he pressed her back into the sheets she thought that for the moment, it just might be comfort enough for both of them.

As you like it


	5. Chapter 5

_Author's note: Please note that the rating for this chapter has changed, so If you aren't old enough or that isn't to your taste, don't read on. For everyone else, enjoy the smutty bits._

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Then the warm line of his body was pressing down on her, and all those thoughts went right out of her head at the sheer physical joy of it.

He made a soft sound in the back of his throat as he gathered himself up against her, as gravity made an embrace out of them. She knew that happiness was fleeting. Evey knew better than most that happiness came in moments that didn't last. A piece here, a piece there. Shiny little fragments of perfection that needed to be cherished and encouraged like a hot coal placed in a pile of newspaper.

The sound he made brought the truth of it home to her. That little exclamation of joy. Here was a piece. One for him, one for her, and her heart leaped in thrilled recognition.

Her father had said, once, that if you could draw every happy moment of your life together like a string of pearls, you could find your way to heaven like god had thrown you a rope.

Holding a pearl in her hands, unlooked for, she had the good grace to give it the full attention it deserved.

She slid her hands up his ribcage, over warm silk, turning her chin to the side to give him better access to her neck. The cloth of his pants was rougher, but not unpleasant against the calves of her legs where her pajamas had pulled up. Leather fingers began a tentative path underneath her shirt, and she suddenly squirmed, fighting her arms out of the sweater she was wearing for warmth.

He hesitated briefly, then started to explore the new expanse of skin, down along her collarbone, lips trailing delicately over her shoulder. His mouth moved lower and Evey found herself tensing a little. His mouth hovered over her right breast, his breath spreading warmth over the cloth, tickling the skin beneath. Anticipation made her tense, but he might have thought it something else. His mouth was tentative, plucking lightly, teasing with teeth at a thin layer of cloth covering her skin. A bit of dampness leaching through made her hiss in her breath, and almost without thought she found herself angling her hips, pressing up against him.

A small betrayal. If they'd never spoken a single word to each other in their whole lives, if they were total strangers twisted together in the dark, he still should have had no illusions as to what this particular young lady desired of him.

"Ah," He sighed, a little tremor running through him out into the world. There was a moment of shifting thought, shifting weight, where everything was in silent motion and anything might happen.

She found herself holding her breath, reached up and laid the flat of her palm against the side of his face. He leaned into the touch for a moment, then lifted himself up a little. She felt him making short, sharp little tugging movements above her in the dark. Confused, she reached up, looking with her hands and found him tearing at his gloves.

"Oh," She said with a nervous breath of laughter. She thought to help, but before she could his hands were free. She heard the faint slap of the leather, tossed to the floor. His hand caught hers, lifting her arm, and he brought his mouth to the inside of her wrist in a gesture that shot sparks of sensation up to her shoulder.

His skin was rough, on her arm. Rough as his hands traced a path from her waist that pulled her shirt right up under her chin. Rough thumbs on her nipples. She gasped, and he replaced his thumb with his mouth, soothing her. It was better, and it was much worse. She slid her hand up his shoulder, one palm sliding around the unguarded skin at the back of his neck. His mouth faltered against her at the touch.

He brought his head up to kiss her, insinuating his thighs between hers so that at the first brush of his lips he came up firmly against her. She suddenly had a very clear idea of exactly what he was feeling at the moment.

He rocked against her with a little grunt at the friction and she called to him, softly.

"V..." There was enough real longing in her voice to nearly embarrass her just at the sound of it to her own ears.

A sharp exhalation of breath, and his hands trailed down to catch possessively at her waist, thumbs riding her hipbones. Sliding the loose drawstring pants down her thighs. She wiggled underneath him, kicking her legs to shed the cloth. With an awkward, breathless twist her shirt joined her pants, and she was faced with the undeniable reality of a fully clothed man resting against her extremely naked body.

For a moment she arched up, pressed herself against all that soft cloth, rubbing herself against him. Her hands slid up under his arms, across his back. She hitched her legs up over his thighs, drawing him in closer. He made a pleased sound at the attention. She nuzzled her face against his shirt like a cat, breathing him, tasting him. A shift of his weight brought the bulge in his pants firmly against her and she flexed her thighs, rubbing herself, teasing.

He choked, faintly, at the sensation, and she felt him fumbling with his pants in the dark. His undergarments were softer than his pants, and warm, god, he was warm...

His shirt billowed loosely against her as it came free of his unfastened pants and she moved like lightning, slipping her hands up underneath it.

So warm...

She slid searching fingers up under his silk shirt, the roughness of his skin on her palms facing the softness of the silk on the back of her hands. He jumped at the touch, and she felt his heart racing under the pads of her fingers. She smoothed her hands over his chest as if she could calm his heart from the outside in.

"That feels..." V murmured brokenly "Like...heaven..."

The utter sincerity of the wonder in his voice curled like a fist around her heart.

The small separation between them was abruptly, violently unbearable. She was going to die in that bed, if she didn't fill up that space between them. If she didn't stop herself from thinking about why it took so little to leave him completely undone. If she started to put herself in his place, to imagine how he felt... if he got any more hooks into her heart... He was a man of many words. He'd kill her yet, with those words.

"You are," He said with a quiet helplessness that was tearing strips off her, "so beautiful." He rested his forehead lightly against hers, so she felt it when he shook his head. "I wanted to save you. I wanted for you to be free, as you wished to be."

His voice dropped.  
"So beautiful. I couldn't imagine what you would look like if you were free." His words had taken on a hushed-in-church quality, and he pulled back a little. She thought he was looking down at her. Searching the darkness for her face.

"Now you know."She said simply, bluntly. A sigh from above, a softening of the muscles in the body pressed close to her.

"Mmm." The sound breathed past his lips like a sonnet, like music floating up under a window late at night.

The back of his hand was surprisingly soft against her cheek.

"I have fought men more dangerous than I am. I have in the past, and I will in the future." Evey spied something coming towards her in his tone of voice, like an oncoming train. His hand stroked down her cheek.

"'There lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords-'" He might have finished, but she'd clapped a hand up over his mouth, her fingers doing the pleading for her. Not that one. Anything else. Not-

She let lips do what hands do, and pressed her mouth against his. She fancied he understood her, and for a moment he was soft, gentle with her. Spreading his mangled hands over the smooth stretch of her skin. Letting her feel...letting her...

She did not think, 'This man is in love with me'. It was not something that came in a bolt of lightning. He tilted his hips a little, his erection brushing right over her, and something changed. It was rather like she'd picked something up off a table, it was so effortless. Of course. Of course. He was breathing and his heart was beating and he was loving her.

Gently, rocking himself against her, pressing himself in a warm, firm line. He was pushing himself out of his undergarments with the motion, the texture of his skin shockingly different than the cloth. A soft puff of air against her ear, a little exhalation with each thrust. The softest exclamation of need and want. The sound of it shot a flush of blood to all the right areas of her body, just as he slipped free of fabric. His next nudge was lower, the angle of his hips changing, one of his hands catching under her thigh.

She felt him, and then he was pushing, he...

Oh.

Above her he hissed in a breath. Her body accepted him in, and he froze above her, suddenly tense. His hand on her leg was shaking, and he was almost pinching her with the strength of his fingers. For a moment, when he didn't go on, she thought that he'd come immediately. That suspicion brought a surprising mix of disappointment and smug confidence. She was mistaken, however, and after a hesitation he pulled back and pushed again, more firmly.

Yes...like that...

Then he shifted his body above her, bringing them close together, and there was nothing rough about it. He fitted himself against her as though having sex with her was incidental in the face of being able to be near her. He kissed his way up her neck, captured her lips as though it was all just one more way to get closer to her, to get more of her.

God damn him.

He breathed her name against her lips and something fundamental crumbled away from her. It might have been her sanity, if she'd had any left. It might have been...

She was going to die there. Lying under this scarred man in the dark basement of London. He was gentle and soft and desperately sincere. He was loving her. With a soft sound that might have been a sob, Evey pulled her arms tight around him and helped it happen.

* * *

When Evey woke the next morning the world felt very different, and V was gone. 

She didn't cry. It wasn't, exactly, a rejection. It was an answer, of sorts. She packed her things up and said her goodbyes.

She didn't look back. It wasn't necessary. It would have been...wrong. Something was telling her that there would be no half-steps to this dance. A sharp pull on her spine, a swing of momentum that said if she stayed it would be for good, so if she would go, then GO.

As she walked towards the lift she spoke softly, absently.

" 'I have an ill divining soul'." At least...she thought she said it. She wasn't sure. She might have just thought it. It seemed to come at her out of the ether. She supposed, in the end, it didn't matter.

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Romeo and Juliet (two quotes and a reference) 


End file.
